Beware the Pretty People

I didn't actually note hackeruser's use of the term, so I wasn't responding to that. My point, I think, stands alone. It doesn't become a tautology, it has a specific meaning, and one important point is that when folks say 'merit' they are often bundling a bunch of stuff in there which is problematic and discriminatory.

Merit sounds like a good thing. (Who wouldn't want to be Pro-Life, right?) But there are structural oppressions within it that deserve to be challenged.

I disagree. Finding a shared vocabulary can be essential to actual communication. It's far too easy for people to argue a similar or even the same point without that shared reference point. That doesn't really need to be what it "really means" as long as it's meaning in the discussion is well understood.

'Merit' has its own problems, because it connotes 'deserving', and it is a problem to suggest that a rich, Harvard educated white male deserves a job more than a poor, community college educated black female. So language has baggage.

That's a problem depending on how you define deserves and what your goal in filling the position is, and even what your eventual goal is (all as an outside observer). Is the goal of getting more participation in certain roles better achieved through artificial insertion of people into those roles, or more focus on earlier stages to make them better fits for those roles so they are naturally chosen at a later stage?

That we optimize for imminent capability is obvious. To do otherwise is gambling. Perhaps it could be considered too high a price to pay - if it had not shown over the past few hundred years that it pays great dividends. I think my stance here is that there are other ways to attack the downsides of privilege rather than putting sub-optimal workers in positions. Namely, work to fulfill the potential of those workers that have said potential.

I think an argument could be made that the current strategy, which has been in place for at least the last few hundred years in the west, has lead to a higher percentage of people utilizing their talents optimally than ever before, with a higher standard of living for more people than ever before, with a higher survival rate as well. I think it's folly to attack what I see as the fundamental mechanism that's lead to this while there are still other avenues to pursue.

There's no problem with being ignorant of things we don't know.

The problem is not the being ignorant, the problem is the use of the label ignorant as an argument tactic to cast the opposition's position as unworthy of consideration. Being ignorant has no bearing on whether an argument has merit. You may not want to rehash topics that you think have been well covered before, but in that case, a reference could be included with your statement of your position and where it was informed from, and why you think it's a decided issue (we are far, far from the hard sciences here, so let's not delude ourselves with notions that our opinions are fact).

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I suspect you don't, because I agree with your counter-argument. I think language is flexible. It only matters that someone can understand what we mean, because it is the meaning that matters, not the word. Too often discussions end up about what words really mean or should mean. That feels like an argument that is getting somewhere, but it actually does very little intellectual work. It distracts from talking about the actual topic. That's all I meant.

> That we optimize for imminent capability is obvious.

Not to me. There's nothing gambling about, trying to make it so that potential capability is more accurately correlated to imminent capability. Then both strategies align.

As you say work to fulfil everyone's potential.

But as long as systemic privilege exists there will be some with more resources and access to capabilities despite lower potential. So we end up employing large numbers of sub-optimal people just because they could afford to become educated / mentored / inspired, and ignoring others with far more potential because they didn't happen to have those benefits.

As I said, I'm not totally convinced by the economic argument (or rather I'm not convinced that, if it were false in some way, it would be a good reason to keep privilege unchecked), but that's what the argument is, as I understand it.

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You're my hero/ine thank you!